WireMaker Script

For my Python scripting class, I decided to make a tool that would help with the workflow of creating certain elements that tend to cause artists a lot of trouble, wires, cables, tentacles, you name it.

What this script basically does is to create a curve with locators, after this, the user can move around the locators and shape the curve to his needs. After he's done he can press the render wire button, this rebuilds the curve to smooth it and extrudes a shape with construction history.

Finally, the user can tweak around the radius, twist and tapering of the wire, when he's done the tool clears the extruded shape along with the curve to end up with a nice and clean scene.

There's still some minor issues or tweaks I'd like to implement, but as of now the tool is fully functional.
Big props to my instructor Jason Parks for all the assistance.

Download the script here
Hopefully some people will find it useful, again, this was my first try at Python so it's not perfect by any means, anyone is free to modify and improve it (And if you do that, by all means let me know!)

UDK Pacman 1.5

I'm not really a coder/scripter nor I think I excel at it, but I had fun working in this project and I learned a couple of things that will be useful for future projects.

The game was updated taking advantage of unrealscript, the pellets are their own pickup now, they also trigger their own sound and have a set variable where it detects the amount of pellets at the start of the level and as soon as it reaches zero it clears the level. Some minor matinee and kismet workarounds were used for the messages and HUD since I didn't have nearly enough time to learn actionscript and scaleform. Finally some minor game balance tweaks were adjusted to make the game a bit easier (The mobile pawn now is 1.5 times faster)
Huge thanks to my Intermediate scripting instructor Jon Rick for all the help and assistance he provided.

Senior Project II - Final

Some extra adjustments here and there, small decal tweaks, I replaced the glass on the chambers with a more believable glass (Same for the smashed glass, I added some extra lights and other elements to fill some of the empty space.

At this point I think I might be done with this piece, I'd like to move on to something else but this was definitely a learning experience that will definitely help my future projects improve a lot.

Senior Project II - Week 11

Here's an updated scene with even more adjustments concerning lighting, some post processing effects and textures/materials. At this point I'm not sure if I'll be able to make any other adjustments to my scene, but we'll see, there's still one or two things I'd like to add/adjust.
*Edit: I made some minor adjustments with decals and added some other stuff, nothing worth a new post though.

Senior Project II - Week 10

Some more adjustments and refinements of static meshes and their respective textures, an updated generator core and proper light sources with their respective point light.

*I updated the scene again in this post, there's only minor changes that aren't really worthy of me making an extra entry to the blog though.

Senior Project II - Week 9

Some more substantial updates to make the environment feel more believable, cables and wires, pipes, decals, the generator is more complete, more textures baked down from a hi-poly, greeble, supports.

The next update will probably cover some adjustments to the assets in the back portion of the environment, I'll work on some more decals, some lighting adjustments and general refinements.

Senior Project II - Week 8 - 2

Quick update, some more light adjustments (I tried to have some kind of "marquee" with my lights), started working on the generator, and refined more meshes and textures.

Senior Project II - Week 8 - 1

The lighting has been completely redone, I added some place holder spotlights for some static meshes I'll be adding.
I had to add extra geometry to the consoles, so I had to rebake its normals and retexture some stuff, I lowered the brightness of the screens so they wouldn't overpower the composition and made some adjustments to the modular metal material to make it more believable.

Senior Project II - Week 7 - 4

I started populating some areas with beams and wires to make the environment more believable, I toned down the color of the liquid, I think it works as a diffuse better instead of an emissive.

I think I might have to tone down the brightness (and/or lower the opacity) of the holopanels, I'll consider that after getting some feedback since it's good to have some fresh eyes look at the environment. I feel like they'll be guiding the player to the generator along with the emissive on the floor, but the current brightness might be too intense.

Senior Project II - Week 7 - 3

Another update. This one was focused around the area next to the pit, the new railing is fully textured and is using both a new material baked from a hi-poly and a modular metal material for the railing thanks to the implementation of submaterials.
Light works as intended now, assets have this light source coming from below that helps them blend with the environment, the shaders for the liquid inside the chambers were completely redone.
Finally holographic screens were implemented after setting a complex shader with a bunch of bump offset nodes and other neat features, I got some feedback regarding this so I'll improve these some more.

The floor's shader also uses two textures with bum offset, one has an emissive material.

Senior Project II - Week 7 - 2

After last class' critique I thought it would be a wise move to invest some time researching on hand drawn textures, I found an excellent tutorial for metal so I gave it a try, and these are the results. The material features a detail map and a proper specular map, some research was necessary to find out that textures require certain adjustments to achieve the same specularity as the one in Max's viewport (Most of these are related to the specpower node).

The texture is a modular material that's used in various assets through the environment, the  ladders, a new piece of railing. Textures and shaders are being adjusted, lighting is close to final. The next update will feature a more complete view of the environment.

Senior Project II - Week 7 - 1

Some big adjustments to the scene, since the cloning chambers are so important and detailed they were moved closer to the camera (The camera was adjusted too, it did wonders to give me a fresh and new perspective of my scene), at the same time most of the main lighting adjustments were finally finished thanks to various tricks and feedback from my instructors, the chambers have that small light, so the mesh will be adjusted to emit a light from the emissive map, the left side being slightly dark isn't much of an issue right now. Some other details from the mesh are being tweaked thanks to some valuable feedback (I'll move the placement of the light, add some more plates and a small control panel), the spotlight inside the chamber definitely makes the figure much more visible.

Also, due feedback I'll be replacing a couple of assets and reworking the textures (I found great pieces of concept art that will help me quite a bit), updates will follow shortly since I'll be working the entire weekend on this.

On a minor note, I heavily adjusted the shaders for the cloning chamber, it's easier to appreciate the distortion in real time, the opacity and some nodes were adjusted to make the color blend with the rest of the environment some more, there's still some minor adjustments to be made.

Senior Project II - Week 6

More updates on the scene, I was focused on finishing the left side of the environment (Not counting the tweaks required for the chambers) but I'm feeling kinda burnt out from working on the scene. I replaced the pipes (And populated the top part with them, I'm not too fond of the pipes that have an alpha map, they look good when there's movement but when I look at them on a still picture they're not as impressive), fixed the issue with the translucency with the glass panels, added some support to the pillars and pipes behind the chambers and I tried to find a way to hide the seams.

I toned down the fog volume as suggested and added a basic 3 point light system around the generator (The meshes are there, I just realized that they're being covered by the railing so I'll move them around).
I'm not entirely sure if I want to keep the platform around the generator, I might add something else instead to make the area more interesting.
The area around the generator is being textured next since the current texture is too clean, I'll probably add some support pillars to break up the shapes.

I'm not sure about the color balance of the scene either, I have a bit of red to draw attention to the storytelling element of my scene, and then greens and blues, and then some neutral colors on the rest of the scene with some yellow but then some of my fill light has a purple hue so I've been experimenting with some lighting settings.

Senior Project II - Week 5

Really fast update concerning my scene, I'm adding some of the extra assets that will make the environment more believable, I got a little bit sidetracked by scripting the Pacman kismet game but this will get back in track soon enough.
I might have to tone down the volume fog a little bit. Some of the opacity on the glass isn't working properly but I believe that's an issue with the blend translucent mode so I might have to make that a submaterial.

UDK Pacman

After dealing with quite a bit of technical issues and tons of research (The time I spent on research easily surpasses the time I spent on the scripting part) I finally completed this.

It was quite the learning experience, I'd love to add power ups, a fancy HUD, randomly spawning fruits, and overall polish some details here and there but for now this works as intended.

Senior Project II - Week 4

Here's some quick paintovers of the scenes in different lighting situations

And here's some of the fully textured assets in the environment along with their diffuse map, there's some small issues with lightmaps that will get sorted out.

 

Finally, some detail maps have been implemented to the assets to increase the amount of detail without havig to reply on huge texture files.

Scripting WIP

So now for a small change, this is some of my progress for the Intermediate Scripting class, I'm trying to recreate Pacman in UDK. Collision and visuals (An emissive shader that pulses and cycles through different colors) are mostly done. The camera is all set too. The challenge now is to entirely change they way the game was set, initially I was using the default UT Deathmatch player with bots but the controls were rather inconvenient and the bots aren't working properly so I'm most likely changing the way things are set right now.

Senior Project II - Quick comparison shots

Here's a quick comparison shot of the progress, the lighting has come a long way, it's still not final but it's close to it.

Senior Project II - Another revision to lighting and some extra stuff

The scene has been updated with some extra lights to make the composition more interesting.
A subtle dominant directional light and lightmass volume were added to have some subtle shadows and light the scene up a little bit. A point light was added near the bottom of the environment to simulate the light from the emissive and simulate some sort of rim light.
Other than that some minor adjustments were made to the rest of the lights and emissives (mainly the green elements from the chambers) to find the right balance, some static meshes weren't lit properly before due lack of lightmaps but that issue has been addressed.

Another element that was added (and it might be too subtle to notice) is a plane with a fog shader placed a unit above the floor, again, to make the composition more interesting.

At this point the basic lights are pretty much done, the next step is to make the rest of the adjustments from feedback I received during class.

Senior Project II - Lighting and Composition update

Here's another quick update, there's some additional tweaks to the lighting just to give a general idea of what I'm aiming for, this isn't final (The generator will have quite a bit of emissive, same for control panels and possibly some of the railing)

I might move that door a bit closer to the camera or tweak that railing, just to make it more visible, this is still missing quite a big of greeble, cables and other details, but those will be added over time.

Senior Project II - New camera angle and lighting update.

A quick update to the senior project environment, this screenshot is using the new camera angle, some elements were repositioned or expanded and most elements from the paintover are in.

I'm still playing around with the lighting, I want the emissives to stand out but I don't want the environment to be too dark and lose focus from the hero props. A bunch of assets are fully textured but these might see some changes to unify the final look of the environment. 

Senior Project II - Paintover and general project update

A quick update to the environment, the camera angle has changed to reduce some of that negative space and some small props have been added (pipes, stairs, more railing) to give the environment more of a functional look, the missing generator has been added, the ceiling above the generator has been expanded upwards to emphasize the scale of the generator, the pipe/wiring that connects the generator to the rest of the environment has been placed below the glass too.

The next update will be focused on the redesign for the columns and quite possibly some design ideas for the new railing piece and stairs.

The floor and walls will be changed for sure (That will be saved for a later update), they'll have more of a sci-fi look (They keywords/ideas I have so far are metal, grates and wiring, of course these will be modular but at the same time I'll try to keep them as interesting as possible)

Everything is already imported into UDK, so I'll also be dealing with common issues and troubleshooting (Lightmaps, material and shader issues, seams, etc.)

Senior Project II - First post

Over the following weeks I'll keep this blog updated with concepts and progress related to my senior project.

My environment is a Biolab/cloning lab with aesthetics slightly based on Metal Gear Rising.
This is the initial concept for some props, the shape of the test tubes/cloning chambers changed over time to make them more interesting, the initial concept was supposed to have the chambers embedded into the wall but it was later changed to a more traditional but also more interesting shape.

The generator and control panel will be reworked on through the course (And additional control panels are being worked on, these will be embedded into pillars that will separate the cloning chambers)

The composition and layout is for the most part the same, not counting the updated design for the cloning chambers, more additional props will be placed through the environment to balance the amount of negative space.














Some reference material for visuals, textures and shaders.

The initial concept for the cloning chambers was modular:

And this is the new version of the cloning chambers.

And this video shows an early version of the shaders used in an early version of the environment. The pipe is completely gone and will be replaced with something that makes more sense, environment-wise (Metal pipes and cables that will power up the generator)

A more updated version of the environment, the floor and wall textures are being completely replaced, the columns are being reworked on right now, there's one placeholder (The platforms around the missing generator) and there's a lot of adjustments that will be implemented over the course of the next weeks (Lighting, light functions, tweak the placement of some assets, as well as adding more small props and details that will make sense design-wise), this time assets and certain elements will be worked on individually instead of working on all the elements at the same time and wasting time on shaders.

First attempts at Zbrush

I've always wanted to learn how to properly use ZBrush, thankfully I'm taking a ZBrush-related course right now, these are some of my first attempts at learning the software, a rock based on Amakusa's stage from Samurai Shodown 1 and a stone mask from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Not bad for a first try, working on the assets was again a learning experience, and as always there's room for improvement, I plan to revisit these assets in the near future.